Never put your faith in the intelligence of people

You go through life trying to believe people are basically
intelligent, even if the casinos keep getting bigger. You maintain
this belief in the face of late-night infomercials, presidential
elections and sales of diet pills.

But sometimes you are tested, and you sympathize with Moses. Or
even 24-hour credit card-hotline operators. Part of this belief is
that while people are basically intelligent, some of them are bad
people, and will do bad, intelligent things, like devise sandwiches
that consist of what are possibly eggs and greasy meat between two
little pancakes.

Then you see something like a story about someone in England
stealing a horse's drug sample, when the horse is under suspicion
for steroids (horses being extremely competitive that way).

As you read further in the story from The Guardian, you read the
police's exact description of the theft: Someone heisted a sample
of horse urine. Willingly.

To repeat: Someone was so worried about the horse being busted
for steroids -- and the shame that would result from a trial, with
the horse standing behind the little table all day and the judge
holding it in contempt for dropping apples on his nice courtroom
floor -- that he or she intercepted a package of horse pee and made
off with it, maybe shouting, "I've got the pee! Quick, to the
getaway car!" And then they sped off and cackled at their
fiendishness, until they realized that they'd just stolen something
that you probably don't want anywhere near car seats, clothes or
human skin. Hopefully they realized this and found a place to get
rid of it (other than, "I dunno, it's a rental, put it in the glove
compartment.")

The horse's owner, Cian O'Connor (a Gaelic name that oddly
translates to "Barry Bonds"), was the show-jumping champion at the
Athens Summer Olympics, and thus the only gold-medal winner from
Ireland, but this is questionable when you figure the only real
skill involved is not falling off. It's also got to be a bad sign
when your only medalist is willing to be paid in carrots. In
addition to an initial failed drug test, judges were suspicious
when the horse leapt over not only a couple hedges but the entire
Kenyan track team.

Unfortunately, the testing system found a leak (guffaw) in this
diabolically clever plan, as a blood sample still existed that
showed the poor horse was doped up enough to help the Budweiser
Clydesdales compete in snowmobile races.

If this is not enough to shake your faith in villains not really
being any brighter than your average phone book, a story from the
Sacramento Bee might be enough for you to, in shame, investigate
real estate involving secluded caves on desert islands (with full
back yards).

According to the story, a pair of men pulled up at a tire store
in Roseville and made the casual, everyday offer of some marijuana
for tires. Fire one for Firestones, I guess. Being unfamiliar with
exchange rates for narcotics vis a vis automotive accessories, I am
unsure if this was a fair trade.

The tire store clerk, unable to authorize this transaction
without clearance from a store manager, refused, leading to one of
the men in the car, showing a good grasp of bartering principles,
attacking the employee with a metal baseball bat.

From there, the tire store employee fought back like a crazed
monkey, by shattering a window on the car with a rock, and
skittering into the back to find a manager, or perhaps a Deadhead
who could explain conversion rates. While this happened, the
would-be dealmakers showed go-get-'em spirit, and just took the two
tires, presumably not leaving the weed behind, because they still
had to get someone to install the tires, after all.

If their plan had ended there, you could've admired the
creativity, though perhaps not the negotiating strategy ("If he's
not down with this idea, dude, we'll turn him into red sand. Got
any Doritos?"). Alas, their plan kind of fell down a dark well when
they realized one of the windows was broken, and went back to the
tire store to see if they could find whoever did that. Hint: You
tried to hit them with a baseball bat. Some would say they had
cause.

Police eventually arrested one of the lifetime MENSA members
after chasing him through a shopping mall, and I think he was
spotted at a Taco Bell stand first.

So you read all this, and you think: Maybe criminals aren't
intelligent. Maybe I have been wrong all this time in assuming that
crooks have more guile than that guy on the Cookie Crisp box.

But then you might think, all this thinking hurts. I'm hungry.
When do they stop serving McGriddles?

Ben van der Meer is the news editor of the Tracy Press. He
can be contacted by e-mail at benvan@tracypress.com.